"I had plenty of chances better than that floorwalker. But I knew I was
good looking, and I thought if I could only hold out I might get married
to some fellow who was well fixed. What's the matter?"

Hodder's exclamation had been involuntary, for in these last words she
had unconsciously brought home to him the relentless predicament in the
lives of these women. She had been saving herself--for what? A more
advantageous, sale!

"It's always been my luck," she went on reflectingly, "that when what I
wanted to happen did happen, I never could take advantage of it. It was
just like that to-night, when you handed me out the bill of fare, and
I ordered beefsteak. And it was like that when--when he came along
--I didn't do what I thought I was going to do. It's terrible to fall in
love, isn't it? I mean the real thing. I've read in books that it only
comes once, and I guess it's so."

Fortunately she seemed to expect no answer to this query. She was
staring at the wall with unseeing eyes.

"I never thought of marrying him, from the first. He could have done
anything with me--he was so good and generous--and it was him I was
thinking about. That's love, isn't it? Maybe you don't believe a woman
like me knows what love is. You've got a notion that goin' downhill, as
I've been doing, kills it, haven't you? I Wish to God it did--but it
don't: the ache's there, and sometimes it comes in the daytime, and
sometimes at night, and I think I'll go crazy. When a woman like me is
in love there isn't anything more terrible on earth, I tell you. If a
girl's respectable and good it's bad enough, God knows, if she can't have
the man she wants; but when she's like me--it's hell. That's the only